Worcesteria: WooSox Watch

By Bill Shaner

Thursday

Jul 11, 2019 at 12:01 AM

WOOSOX WATCH: The official groundbreaking on the WooSox baseball park project is today and — par for the course — there’s a ton of mostly unnecessary speculation and intrigue heading in. The big rumor is whether or not the team is going to take the occasion to announce the team’s official name which, despite WooSox already being in the common vernacular, is still an open question. Those close to “insiders” have been arguing online all week whether the rumor has any veracity. In the event that it does, here is my Hail Mary pass: If anyone in the PawSox organization is reading this, know that every day I wake up and pray that the team is named the Worcester Worcesters. It is the best choice. It is the only choice.

WHAT A PLATFORM: Well it’s about that time our Worcester municipal election candidates are putting together and marketing their platforms. They’re usually nothing too complicated. Conservative candidates will say they support public safety, progressive candidates will say the city’s good fortune needs to be spread to everyone, something to that effect. This year, we may see even more reductive pitches to voters. Conservative candidate for City Council and former School Committee member Donna Colorio sent out a mailer recently with two bullet points – lowest residential tax rate and “supportive of Superintendent of WPS.” Imagine that’s the battle line this year? Supportive vs Not Supportive. Ugh, wouldn’t surprise me. As if the initial debate around her contract renewal wasn’t reductive enough. Strap in.

RENTERS’ LAMENT: A little late to this, but this data is evergreen and should play a larger role in the discussions we’re having about Worcester’s development renaissance. The Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance shared an intriguing slice of data from a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition a little while ago. The data shows that Massachusetts is the third highest state to rent in, with two-bedroom apartments going for $1,758 at the fair market rate. To spend the recommended rate of 30 percent on housing, this requires $70,000 a year income. In the Worcester area, someone would need to make $23 an hour to afford a two bedroom apartment at the fair market value. But, the Alliance points out, the mean wage for renters in the area is only $13.84 per hour. That means someone looking to rent such an apartment out – a single parent for instance – would need to work 1.7 full-time jobs. Someone earning minimum wage would need to work 1.9 full-time jobs. And they say the economy is booming.

THE STATE OF LOCAL NEWS: A very interesting but little-discussed bill is making its way through the halls of the State Legislature on the current shape that local journalism finds itself in (not good). The bill, which saw a hearing yesterday, aims to put together a 17-person commission to look at a few key things: communities underserved by local journalism, a.k.a. news deserts, the adequacy of press coverage in cities and towns, the ratio of residents to news outlets, strategies to improve access to news, identifying career pathways for potential journalists and, lastly, public policy solutions to improve the sustainability of local press business models. I’m most intrigued by the last one, and feel it’s high time the government step in and help with the absolute decimation of local journalism jobs. I can’t say much more without getting myself in trouble, but I’ll leave you with this note: Over the past several decades, the news industry has seen more proportional job loss than the coal industry, the steel industry and fishing. Yeah, it’s that bad. Surely an interesting bill to follow, and I hope our state legislature does more than simply “study” this problem at the core of democracy.